


A Dragon's Hoard

by Eristastic



Category: End Roll (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Miscommunication, Names, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8319241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: Kantera has secrets, and that's not the best way to keep a relationship going. Neither is taking relationship advice from Mireille and Russell, but Tabasa's desperate.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AO3 user MiniNephthys requested something with Kantera giving his true name (recently released with everyone's last names: I'm not just making it up), so here we go. It got kind of dramatic (sorry)

The Nameless Village is a lovely place, really. Tabasa can’t picture himself being this happy anywhere else, or among any other group of people, and he’s not just saying that because the other options range from a festival-obsessed tourist trap to a cave teeming with drugged-up Catties. But, no matter how much he loves the village and the villagers, even he has to admit that it’s somewhat lacking in people to ask for romantic advice.

Hence why he’s now in Mireille’s kitchen, with a lukewarm cup of tea in his hands, trying to ignore how both she and Russell are staring at him pityingly.

“But…are you _sure_?” she asks, for perhaps the fourth time.

Wearily, he nods and shuffles his legs closer on the wooden stool.

“…really, though? You really think things aren’t going well between you and Kantera? Really?”

“Look, I’ve said it enough times already, haven’t I?!” he shouts, regrets it, and looks down at his hands again. “Sorry. It’s just…it’s eating at me a bit. I mean, everything’s fine normally, and we don’t fight or anything, but it feels like…” He doesn’t have to search for the right phrasing, since he’s been thinking this conversation over for days, but it takes him a moment to work up the nerve. “It’s like he doesn’t trust me.”

“Oh,” Mireille says, fiddling with her apron. Behind her, Russell is quietly wiping down the surfaces and doing a very good job of pretending he’s not listening. Then again, it’s Russell: he might not be pretending.

“I mean,” Tabasa says quickly, “obviously we do, uh, things that we wouldn’t do with other people. Obviously. But. When I try to get him to talk about…you know, important things, he closes up. I think he’s walling himself in, and I don’t know what to do!” He laughs bitterly, setting the cup down on a counter and starting to play with the ends of his hair so he has an excuse to keep staring at the floor.

Mireille makes a worried sound. “You don’t think he’s stopped caring about you, do you?”

“How am I supposed to know? He could have.”

Tabasa looks up, which was clearly a mistake, because he catches Mireille and Russell sharing a look that reeks of pity. He clenches his fists.

“Tabasa, I really don’t think he’s stopped caring. If you could see how he looks at you…”

“Well, I can’t,” he spits. “So I’m just left with what I _can_ see, and that’s not much, at all. It’s not like I have any experience with this kind of thing! I just know that he won’t tell me anything about his past, or him, or anything!” Ignoring the fact that none of them remember much about their pasts, because that doesn’t matter, that’s not the point. “I’m just left feeling like I’ve misread something here, like I’m getting it all wrong and he doesn’t actually care. He sure as hell doesn’t trust me, and that’s just as bad. But there’s no one I can talk to except you, because apparently no one else here has any experience with love, and what was I going to do – go speak to Father Abstinence about how I think my partner just wants me for–” He stops, remembering his audience, and finishes, “…adult things?”

He doesn’t even know why he censored himself for Russell’s sake. He could probably go into the details of his sex life and the kid wouldn’t even blink. Look at him, staring at Tabasa like…like…like he pities him. Again with the pity.

Mireille’s worse, actually, since she just says, in a dumbfounded kind of way, “Good grief, you really are blind if you think Dogma’s abstinent.”

There’s a pause, horror floods her face, and she waves her hands frantically. “I-I mean! You’re getting it all wrong! Dogma aside, I think you should really go and talk to him.”

“Okay, thanks Mireille, I’ll just go do what I’ve been doing all this time with minimal to no success.”

“N-no, I mean really _try_. I don’t know: you could…” She trails off, leaning against the countertop and staring into the bright lights of the kitchen, as if in thought. The oven’s humming faintly in the background – a giant beast of black metal and doors that look like they’d fit better in a ship than a kitchen. Russell, finished cleaning up, spreads his hands out.

“Why don’t you offer him an ultimatum?”

He says it so seriously that for a second Tabasa doesn’t realise he’s kidding. Nervously, Tabasa laughs. “Russell, you shouldn’t–”

“A-an ultimatum! That’s perfect!” Mireille claps her hands together and beams at Russell, who, for the span of a second, actually lights up from the praise. He certainly doesn’t object when Mireille ruffles his hair and calls him clever for thinking of it.

Okay. Maybe he wasn’t kidding.

Tabasa swallows. “Guys, I don’t think–”

“No, it’s wonderful!” Mireille insists. “I was just going to suggest something stupid like giving him a cold so he has to stay inside and you get to take care of him and keep him all to yourself, but gosh, what was I thinking? This is much better. Quicker, too.”

“Uh…yeah. That it is.”

“So I think…I think you should just tell him you’ve had enough! That he should be honest with you, o-or face losing you forever!” She looks earnest. Tabasa’s not sure he’s ever seen her so earnest around anyone who isn’t Saxon. Russell’s gone to check on whatever they’re cooking, and that means Tabasa’s left alone to face her.

“I’ll, um. I’ll do my best.”

“Th-that’s the spirit!” she says cheerfully, patting down her apron and doing something with the angle of her head so she suddenly appears shorter than him even though he’s sitting down. Her hair bounces, too. Tabasa wonders if she practices.

“A-anyway, do you want to stay for tea?” she asks, once again the Mireille Tabasa’s always known. Thrown off course a little, he accepts.

 

His heart is in his mouth the next time he goes to Kantera’s house, but it’s usually there when he goes to meet Kantera, so it’s no huge setback. Miraculously, he gets past greetings, sitting down for tea (he really prefers coffee, he reflects), casual small-talk (and why is it small-talk? They’re partners! They’re not supposed to be making small-talk!), and nearly half an hour of sheer nothingness until he manages to blurt out what’s been on his mind.

“H-hey,” he starts, his shoulders hunched over as he looks across the low table at Kantera. “Have you ever…I mean, random question, but have you been in a relationship before?”

“Me?” Kantera raises his (perfect) eyebrows in a sculpted portrait of mild surprise, lifting a sleeve to his mouth. “I believe so.”

“You believe so.”

Kantera laughs lightly, and it might not sound like wind-chimes or anything, but it does send shivers down Tabasa’s spine. Good ones.

“I’m sorry,” Kantera says in his gentle, criminally soft voice. “I can’t quite seem to remember.”

“Oh. Well, that’s… I guess we’re all a bit like that here. What _can_ you remember?”

“Of what?”

“Of your past.”

Frowning, just slightly, Kantera tilts his head to the side, and Tabasa decides it’s horrendously unfair that everything this man does is elegant. “I’m not quite sure what you mean. Would you really like me to tell you everything I can remember? But I couldn’t even say where I should start.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Tabasa says, smiling encouragingly and leaning over the table. Not too much: not enough to make Kantera feel boxed in, but enough that there’s no more pressure on his calves pushed against the tatami mats. “Just tell me anything. I’d love to hear it!”

“I would only bore you,” Kantera says with absolute conviction, reaching up to brush a lock of hair behind a horn. “Let’s talk of something else: how–”

“Let’s not.”

Kantera looks up, his mask of surprise fractured by a tiny twist of something not-quite-right. But it’s gone after Tabasa blinks, and it probably never mattered to begin with.

“Sorry,” he says instinctively. “I just…” For a moment, he’s tempted to forget about it. Isn’t this enough? Does it really matter if it always feels like there’s a wall between them? Kantera’s always kind, considerate, a perfect gentleman and all that, so does it matter?

Of course it fucking matters.

“I’m getting tired, Kantera,” he says, sitting back on his heels and trying not to let his bitterness seep into his face. He fails. “Sorry: this is probably out of the blue for you, isn’t it? But I’ve been thinking about it for weeks and I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

He doesn’t look in front of him: he keeps his eyes very pointedly on a wall hanging to his side – a vertical line of black brush strokes that mean nothing to him. Kantera stays silent, so he continues.

“I’ll try and keep this short. I don’t feel like you trust me. It sounds stupid, but we never talk about anything important. Stuff from our pasts, or how we really feel about things, and maybe that’s all stupidly sentimental, but if it is, then I guess I’m stupidly sentimental too, because I don’t think I can keep this up without that. I need to know that you care about me and trust me, and I don’t think that’s asking too much from a…well, a partner, I guess. That’s what we are, right? Or have I just misunderstood this and you’re only looking for something superficial? Because, I mean,” –he laughs– “if that’s how it is, then just tell me.”

“It has _never_ been like that,” Kantera says quietly, and flinches – actually flinches – when Tabasa whirls round to stare at him.

“But are you going to deny it?” he asks, hating the sourness in every syllable.

Kantera opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. There’s something vulnerable in the trembling lips (Tabasa knows them so well, but not like this), in the rigid pose he holds as if it’s drilled into him. Can’t he relax a little? Is that not playing the game? Does he have to always be superior so that Tabasa’s the brash one, the awkward one, the one in the wrong?

He’s losing his head over this.

“You get it, though, don’t you?” Tabasa asks.

“I…I understand what you’re referring to, and I can only apologise if I’ve hurt you, but I never meant for that to happen…”

“But you can’t change?”

“I…” He looks away. He looks hurt. In another mood, Tabasa would not be reacting the way he is, but that act is pissing him off. As if it’s his fault.

_Isn’t it?_

“Sorry,” he says, and means it. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I’ll go.”

He gets up, feet scraping along the mats, and turns away, and before he can even work out where he’s going next, there’s a hand on his wrist. Turning around, he sees Kantera’s perfect pose broken, warped into a jumble of limbs and twisted fabric as he stretches over the table, his eyes wide. The second Tabasa stops, he pulls away, apologising.

“Forgive me: I didn’t mean…”

“Why did you stop me?”

No answer; he looks up at Tabasa instead. His eyes are full of some deep emotion, like he’s trying to tell him something, but Tabasa can’t read minds. That’s the problem here.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if you can’t open up to people,” he lies. “Live the way that makes you comfortable, I just…I just need some time.”

He turns away again, feeling shockingly empty. It’s like every movement, every step, every breath leaves him feeling more hollow, because he has no idea if he’s doing the right thing. If there’s a right thing to be done here, which he suspects there isn’t. He’s acting like a child. Either way, it’s going to be fine: it’s not like the world’s collapsing on them. It just hurts, and that’s fine, so Tabasa needs to leave for a little while, that’s all.

Pulling on his shoes, he walks to the front door, desperate to escape: the air is tinged with the acrid smell of medicine, and there’s a slight sweetness (like mochi, or manjuu) that’s clogging his throat. He needs to get out, work out how to fix this, work out what he wants, come up with some way to pretend this isn’t as damning as it feels, and–

“Ryuuzen.”

The word sinks into Tabasa’s ears very slowly, but it does stop him in his tracks. Without moving his body, he raises his head and turns it slightly to the side.

“What?”

“Ryuuzen. That’s my real name. I apologise: I never even told you I was hiding it. I haven’t told anybody.”

“You…” Tabasa did turn around then. “Kantera isn’t your real name. Why not?”

Kantera looks down. He’s still hunched over the table, sleeves dropping down onto the floor, and if there’s ever been a moment in his life where he’s managed to look wretched, it’s now. He’s still beautiful, but that goes without saying.

“I told you that I have very little memory of my past,” he says. “That isn’t a lie, but I do remember that it was far from happy. Merely thinking about what my life was before coming here is enough to disturb me, and I have never been able to press myself into remembering actual events. I only know that there are things I never want to remember.”

Tabasa feels like a ragdoll, like his limbs aren’t his own. It’s the best explanation as to why he can’t walk over and offer something in the way of comfort, but it’s not a satisfying one. “And that’s why you don’t want to tell me.”

“Quite. Tabasa, I’m sorry: I never meant to be distant, but I think that I simply _am_ distant.”

Slowly, Tabasa walks over to him, and slumps down into something almost like a sitting position. He’s not quite sure what to say, except, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry too. I wasn’t thinking about you at all, I was just…”

“No, you needn’t apologise,” Kantera says, and smiles, and nothing feels quite as heavy as it did a moment before. He reaches out a hand to brush some of Tabasa’s hair away from his face. “There was no way you could have known, after all. If anything, I should have been the one making it clear to you that I do trust you, I do want to be close to you, I only find it difficult.”

His smile fades a little, but that’s to be expected given the situation, and Tabasa reaches up to take his hand, thread his fingers through Kantera’s. That leads to him leaning across the table, then pushing it away and shuffling forwards until his other hand is around Kantera’s waist. There’s no protest when he tilts his head and moves in to kiss him, or when he practically climbs into Kantera’s lap. It’s a wonder he’s allowed to be so close, he realises.

And when Kantera’s arms wrap around his neck, when they fall back onto the matting, when he whispers that name – Ryuuzen – next to Kantera’s ear, he understands that he’s been allowed far closer than he first thought. And that’s all that matters.


End file.
